


cold is the night, colder your heart

by Solanaceae



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Athas (Location), Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, F/F, Femslash February, Hopeful Ending, or... something close to that at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 00:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13752507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/pseuds/Solanaceae
Summary: A warlock, her splintering mind, and those she meets along the way. A story told in pieces, not necessarily in order. (Basically no knowledge of D&D is needed to read this.)





	cold is the night, colder your heart

**Author's Note:**

> me: oh hey, let's write a short backstory for my first dnd character!  
> me, 13k words later: dungeons and dragons and also writing in present tense were both mistakes.
> 
> \---
> 
> Uses the Dark Sun setting. Some player characters from my high school D&D campaign show up with altered names; credit for them goes to their creators.

Her first memory is of red.

Curtains, she thinks, looking back now. The hazy recollection of her earliest days involves red fluttering over her bed, whispering cloth brighter than blood—but dull, not vibrant like the sun that sets in crimson over the city walls.

Sometimes, when she sinks deep enough into a trance to dream, she hears soft voice humming a lilting melody, feels a hand stroking her hair.

\---

Athas is a desert world, governed by the rule of might. City-states stand as lone outposts of civilization, connected by roads that more often than not are washed out by sand. This is a world in which glory and riches might be won, fighting the beasts of the desert and each other, but it is also a world in which the more likely prize is a violent death.

She spends years going from city to town to nomad camp and back again, taking small jobs for money or accepting contracts to kill—beast or person, she does not discriminate.

It has been a long time since she fought alongside another, so when she finds herself falling into the strange company of a dragonborn and a Thri-kreen, she lets the tides of fate sweep her away with them. She gives them a childhood nickname (the last time her true name was spoken was years ago) and they accept her with open arms.

Strange, she thinks later. Their hearts are good, their intentions mostly for justice and righteousness. That they would welcome her, a warlock with darkness flickering at the tips of her fingers, lurking over her shoulder—perhaps they are naïve, perhaps they are blind, but she decides not to test this.

The insectile Bor is loud and argumentative, but deadly in combat. Dray has a childlike innocence to his voice and steel in his eyes. They pick up others along the way—Ugie, the assassin with a wolf-like smile; Nolie the dwarf and her healing hands but dark soul; Yttogigi and her bear spirit who move as one being on the battlefield. Some leave, some stay.

She hesitates to reveal herself to them, but the heat of battle calls for her full power.

The tentacles that writhe from the ground at her command are tinged purple, roiling shadow that envelops and consumes her enemy. The shadows that blast forth from her hands are knife-edged and scream with madness. There is surprise on her companion’s faces, but afterward, no one says anything about it.

She can imagine what they think: this is not something to fear, only another way warlocks gain power, only another well of magic in a world that seems to brim with them, a world blasted barren by arcane energy.

They are wrong.

At night, she keeps her eyes to the ground, away from the sky and its myriad pinpricks of light. There are things up there that know her name. There are things up there that come closer with each spell she casts, and she does not know how long she has until the shadows turn on her.

The stars were never what they seemed. Once, she had also been blind to the horrors that lived in the spaces between worlds.

No longer.

\---

Tarya is beautiful.

It is a fact known by anyone who knows her—not for the luster of her hair, or the gleam of her eye, or the smoothness of her skin, but for the warm, captivating way she speaks to you, as though you are the only one in the world.

When they are children, they run through the dusty streets of Balic, one of the handful of city-states strung out across the deserts of Athas like beads on a string. Tarya is the leader of their little group of youngsters, their queen, directing them with the polished wooden staff her patrician father gave her.

As they grow, their games of fighting wars with sticks become serious. Giants come ashore regularly from the estuary, water sluicing from their massive limbs, and attack the farms that sprawl outside the city walls. Every adult citizen of Balic must serve each tenth month with the militia to beat back those raids.

She reaches the age of maturity a month before Tarya does, but they are assigned to the same militia group. Their first month patrolling with the standing army approaches.

 _Are you afraid?_ Tarya asks her after training one day. There is a smudge of dirt on her cheek, near her lips, and she has to resist the urge to reach up and smudge it away.

Instead, she scoffs. _Of course not._

She is young, and so is Tarya, and neither of them fear death, or anything else that she later learns is worthy of fear.

\---

In the eye of her heart, Tarya dances in the sunlight. When she moves to chase her, her feet are entangled and she falls. Tarya turns her back and says not a word, leaving her to choke on sand and heat.

It is a punishment for never once telling her how much she loved her.

\---

She stands first watch on one of their early nights out in the desert. They set up camp under the spindly skeleton of a tree bleached white by the sun, and Bor is asleep within minutes, articulated limbs twitching as he dreams. She sits with her back against the tree, chewing a piece of jerky. Dray tosses and turns, clearly sleepless.

After about an hour, she nudges the dragonborn with her foot. “Can’t sleep?”

Dray rolls over, a lopsided smile on his scaled face. “No. Mind if I sit with you?”

She nods. He lumbers to his feet and sinks down next to her. For a moment, they sit in a comfortable silence. The dragonborn is young, younger than almost anyone she has traveled with, but something about the way he holds himself and the kindness in his golden eyes invites trust.

They had met in the city of Urik, at a seedy tavern. She had not meant to stop long in that place—had truthfully only been passing through, preferring to stay out of the large city-states. Meeting Dray and Bor and the rest had been a coincidence. Traveling with them beyond their first venture, though—that had been her choice. She could have left after the first tomb exploration. She could have left after they returned to Urik. She had not.

“Where are you from?” Dray asks, interrupting her thoughts. She sighs, tilting her head back and closing her eyes to keep from seeing the stars.

“Balic,” she says.

“Is that far from here?”

Not for the first time, she wonders what Dray’s upbringing was like. He is a strong fighter, clearly trained in battle, but he seems to have little knowledge of the wider world of Athas.

She makes a noncommittal noise. “Far enough. I have not been back there in many years.”

“Have you been to many places, then?” There is an eager note in the dragonborn’s voice. Despite herself, her lips twitch into a small smile.

“One could say that.” In the two decades since she left Balic, she has kept mostly to the outskirts of civilization, traveling as a guard with caravans or taking contracts.

“You don’t miss it?”

(Tarya’s hand on her arm, golden hair spread across the ground like spilled grain. Grey eyes and laughter.)

“I do not miss that city, no.” Her carefully chosen words are not a lie, technically speaking. She changes the subject. “But where do you come from?”

“I was born from a rare egg,” Dray says.

She blinks, digesting this, then—“A rare egg?”

“A _very_ rare egg.” He seems satisfied about this.

She tries to come up with something to say, settles on,  “That’s—interesting.”

He beams. “Thank you!”

They lapse into a companionable quiet, and eventually she hears the dragonborn’s soft snores.

\---

Their trainer tells her that she is talented with the bow, and assigns her to the high ground of their nightly patrol. Tarya is a whirlwind with her obsidian blade, and so she fights with the melee group. For two weeks, they walk the same circuit of the territory their militia unit has been assigned, three times around per night, and nothing happens.

Then everything happens at once.

They are at the middle point of their patrol, a place where the shore of the estuary bends and the land beside it lifts into a tall hill. She is at the top of this rise with the other archers, scanning the area, when a shadow emerges from the water.

 _Giant!_ someone shouts, and her bow is in her hands in an instant, an arrow notched and searching. The hill giant surges from the river, roaring, its crude covering of sewn hides dripping with water. It has a massive club in one hand and deep black eyes that gleam with tangible malevolence.

The fighters below attack as the archers let their arrows fly. She watches her arrow strike true, sinking into the giant’s arm, but it brushes it off as if it is only an insect sting. It lifts its foot. Their captain turns to shout an order, then looks up just as the foot comes crashing down on him, flattening him to the ground.

She winces at the crunching noise that is audible even from this height, and fumbles for another arrow. Her heart is racing, her hands shaking with adrenaline, and the arrow tumbles to the ground.

 _The captain’s down,_ the elf beside her whispers, eyes wide. She glances at him in time to see him drop his bow and flee.

 _What are you_ — _what are you doing?_ she calls after him, but he is gone. Below, the fighters are in chaos: some continue to attack the giant, others let their weapons fall and run.

She fires again, and despite her shaking hands, it impacts the giant between its shoulder and neck. It roars, turning towards the hill, and she does not have time to notch another arrow before it lumbers towards her, club sweeping across the top of the hill, crashing through the line of archers.

She falls to the ground and feels the rush of air as the club passes inches above her. Before she can stand, a massive hand fastens around her leg and she is swung into the air. She cries out. The giant dangles her upside-down, deep-set eyes scrutinizing her. She struggles to reach her bone knife, but the giant begins to shake her, and the knife spins out of its sheath and into the darkness.

 _El’tera!_ Tarya shouts her name, and in the whirling glimpses she gets of the ground as the giant swings her, she sees Tarya’s blade flash. The giant looks down, roaring, and its grip slips. She flies through the air, limbs flailing, headed for the surface of the river.

She has no time to scream before she is underwater, choking and struggling against the current. Her feet find purchase on the muddy bottom and she claws her way back to the shore, rising from the river with hair and clothes dripping. Her bow is lost; her quiver has spilled half its arrows into the estuary. She pulls one of the remaining ones out, holds the shaft close to the sharp point, and wades out.

The others have been crushed or fled. Tarya stands alone, circling the giant with her blade held in both hands. It is wounded badly, limping as it turns to keep its face towards Tarya, one eye a bloodied mess with an arrow protruding from it.

 _Come and get me,_ Tarya taunts, and the giant snarls. It swings its club at Tarya, and Tarya sidesteps, cleaving its hand from its arm with one stroke of her blade.

It bellows, crashing to its knees. Tarya steps forward.

 _Pathetic,_ she sneers, and lifts her blade.

She sees the giant’s movement a moment before Tarya’s blade falls and opens her mouth to shout a warning. Before she can, the giant rears up, its remaining hand clenched in a fist. Tarya’s sword buries itself in its skull at the same moment that the fist impacts her chest.

The next few seconds are a blur. Later, she recalls screaming Tarya’s name, rushing forward heedless of the danger. The giant falls, but the damage has been done—its fist has crushed Tarya’s chest through her armor. Tarya wavers, then collapses backwards.

She falls to her knees at Tarya’s side. Tarya blinks up at her, something dark trickling from the corner of her mouth.

 _You’re alive,_ Tarya murmurs, then coughs. More blood spatters from her mouth onto her hands.

 _Yes. It’s going to be okay._ She frantically searches for something she can use to staunch the bleeding, but Tarya’s entire chest is caved in, ribs poking through her skin. Surely she can still survive, she thinks, surely there is something someone can do, a healer or a preserver—

Tarya’s hand, slippery with blood, fastens around her wrist. She looks down into grey eyes that are beginning to cloud over.

 _No,_ she hisses, wrenching her arm free. _You aren’t dying._ The words are hollow. They both know the truth.

 _El’tera,_ Tarya says, and then she falls still.

\---

The first time she kills something with her new magic, she _feels_ its essence being sucked out into the tendrils that whip from her hands. Her vision flickers into black for a moment, Acamar’s emptiness yawning before her, and she feels a pulse of approval from the corpse star before the vision fades.

Later, she looks down at her hands and wonders if she has made a mistake. Shadow flickers between her fingers with little more than a thought, turning the blood in her veins cold where it touches her.

She does not dwell on it for long. Warlocks gain their arcane power from pacts with patrons more powerful than them, and she has chosen a patron whose might dwarfs even the night sky. The energy that thrums in her bones is a gift that she chose.

It is far too late to back out.

\---

Her family—her entire race—regards magic as forbidden. She has had this drilled into her since she was a child.

 _Our people came from the Lands within the Wind, long ago,_ her mother told her, eyes serious. _Our home was destroyed by careless sorcerers wielding power they should not have had. The survivors vowed to never dabble in the arcane arts again. We keep that vow._

She still has this instinctive reaction to seeing spells cast, years later—a twist in her stomach, a flash of _wrongness_ , the copper taste of blood in her mouth. Hereditary memory that will not leave.

\---

She savages the giant’s fallen body with her bare hands and Tarya’s knife until she is spattered from head to toe in its dark blood. Chest heaving, she stands over its eviscerated corpse. It is not _enough_.

Tarya lies on the ground, eyes fixed open, golden hair matted with her blood and spread out beneath her head. She is not the only one who died: bodies lie strewn across the ground, at least six, most of them new recruits.

For a moment, she considers going back to Balic. The giant is dead, they have protected the patricians’ investments. Their losses are regrettable, to be sure, but disasters and death happen daily in this world.

She tries to imagine living in this city for the rest of her life, under the yoke of the patricians, risking her life every ten months for people she could not care less about. Living a pointless life, dying in obscurity.

Tarya, she realizes, was the one thing that had kept her tied to Balic. Were it not for the golden-haired girl, she would have left long ago.

A sick feeling gathers heavy in her stomach as she rolls Tarya over, slipping her sword from her grasp and undoing the sheath from her belt. Tarya has little else—her armor is ruined beyond repair, and would not have fit her anyway—but she wears a necklace, a bone charm shaped like the sun strung on a thin cord. She undoes the knot with shaking fingers and ties it around her own neck.

The key to Tarya’s house is in her pocket. She weighs it in one hand, thinking—then takes it as well.

\---

Ruins of old cities swallowed by the sands litter the desert. She finds one such city about a year after making her pact and spends weeks wandering its streets, exploring. The wind sighing around the corners of the stone buildings sounds wistful, and it makes her want to stay in the quiet and peace of this deserted place.

She gets away with this for nearly two months.

She is walking down a winding stair near noon, carefully avoiding the crooked flagstones, when her vision goes dark. Everything is suddenly night sky, the black and the light that she can no longer avert her eyes from.

No, she thinks, desperate, but the vision swallows her.

The stars gather around and whisper her name. She floats, directionless. Something black looms before her, a vast emptiness that nonetheless has a _presence_ , an all-encompassing hunger that consumes the light.

Acamar.

:: you made a promise :: it says. A thousand eyes blink open from the darkness, glowing with a sickly light.

I did, she thinks, knowing it can hear her. And I have upheld it.

:: have you? it has been some time since you gave us what is due. :: There is something too dark to be amusement in the voice that echoes in her head, makes her body tremble. :: will you pay what you owe in full? ::

Despite her better judgement, her mouth twists into a bitter smile. Do I have a choice?

:: of course not. :: Shadows reach out from the black, horribly familiar. She cannot move. The air tastes cold, then suddenly there is no air at all.

I’ll pay, she thinks frantically, trying to suck in a breath, failing. You’ll get what was promised, I’ll pay—

The icy claws close in on her and she tries to scream from airless lungs.

:: oh, you will. never doubt that. ::

She slams back into sunlight and stumbles against the wall, hand clutching at the ancient stone. Her feet slip, and she tumbles down the stairs for a few yards before managing to stop her fall. She lies with her cheek pressed against the stone, skinned palms stinging, sucking in grateful breaths of heated desert air.

She leaves the empty city before nightfall.

\---

She has few memories of her father—he walked into the desert one day, sword in hand, seeking riches, and never returned. His name is rarely spoken. Her mother takes lovers, (sometimes, she suspects, for coin), but generally it is only the two of them, mother and daughter.

Her mother teaches her how to count currency and drive a hard bargain. She is expected to inherit the family livelihood, which amounts to little more than servitude in a human patrician’s farm and selling the excess of the harvest in the marketplace.

Tarya is the daughter of the patrician her parents serve. When she chances upon the girl sitting on the steps, bent over a book, her curiosity makes her approach.

 _What are you doing?_ she asks.

Tarya looks up, brushes golden hair from her eyes. _Reading, obviously._

She leans over, tries to see what the book says, but there are no pictures, only densely packed symbols. _How do you know what it says?_

 _They’re all words._ Tarya gives her a strange look. _Do you not know how to read?_

She shakes her head. _Can—can you teach me, maybe?_ She has only spoken to Tarya alone a few times, and she has always been bad at analyzing people, but she does know how to put honey in her words and silver in her smile. _You’re so smart, I bet it’d be easy for you to show me how._

Just as she expected, Tarya responds with a self-satisfied grin. _I can teach you._ She moves over and pats the stone beside her, an invitation to join her.

\---

 _This is really the one you want?_ The woman casts a scornful glance around the room, as though seeking someone else to pass judgement. There is no one else. The shop is a small one, unassuming and drab on the outside, but she has searched for it—or something like it—for a long time. Inside, the walls are lined with bookshelves, a mess of leather-bound spines and yellowing parchment.

 _I have the coin to pay for it._ She keeps her voice even and patient despite the way her hands hidden in the sleeves of her robe are shaking. _What else do you require?_

 _I doubt you have enough to cover this request,_ the shopkeeper says archly.

She shakes her hand free of the sleeve and drops a handful of gold coins onto the counter. The shopkeeper’s eyes widen. The metal is warm from her hands—she has been holding them, running her fingers over the strange texture. Her family always paid with ceramic coins or bartered; these are from Tarya, as are the finely woven red robes she wears. Stolen, of course.

 _This should be more than sufficient,_ she says, and can’t keep a hint of smugness from her voice.

She leaves the shop with her prize clutched in one hand: three sheets of parchment bound together with thick black thread.

\---

Swords and bows serve a purpose in the world, but to defeat the powerful, she needs more.

Long ago, they say, Athas was a verdant world, lush with life, with vast forests and plains covered in grass. All this was consumed by defilers, who wielded their magic with no care for the way it sucked the life from the world. Now, Athas is a desert world under a crimson sun, savage and ruthless.

She takes care to not drain away the vitality of Athas more than she should—out of a recognition of the ultimate blowback it could bring on her, rather than out of any altruism—but the very nature of some of her spells makes it unavoidable, sometimes.

(And if there is something intoxicating about the feeling of siphoning life away from something, holding its essence in her hands and feeling it there like sun-warmed gold—she does not think too much about it.)

\---

In a godless world, other powers rule.

She meets a halfling woman. Perne tells her she has renounced the bloodthirsty ways of her people, that she is in search of honest ventures. If there is a directionless hunger in her eyes and a yearning in the halfling’s voice, she does not comment on it. Perne accepts her arcane workings, and so she can accept a former cannibal.

She prefers to keep away from the cities, and Perne is no more inclined to come into contact with those who would attack her on sight for her race.

Their first battle together is with a roc, a giant bird with claws like shards of glass. It is a juvenile, hardly a quarter of the size it will one day reach, but still it towers over Perne as she wields her battleaxe against it.

She prefers to hang back, attack from a distance—some things never change—and though she has only learned a handful of spells so far, she grows more comfortable with them each time she casts them.

The roc knocks Perne over with a buffet of its wings, preparing to pounce on her and rend her apart. She steps out into the open, shadows writhing at her feet, from her hands. The bird turns its harsh yellow eyes on her, momentarily distracted.

 _Come and get me,_ she calls to it. It is wounded badly, one wing dragging uselessly on the ground, but it takes the bait and hops toward her, beak plunging down. She dodges that, but its talons latch onto her, completely encircling her body and wrenching her forward. It pins one of her arms to her side; she tries to fire off another spell with the other and it goes wide, ricocheting off a rock.

Its beak descends, and she sees in a flash how it will cave in her skull, pierce skin and bone like she would crumple paper. She closes her eyes, shouts, _Perne, now—!_

Something thuds into the roc, sending a tremor through it that she can feel all around her, and the roc lets out an awful, ear-splitting screech. Its talons open, dropping her to the ground, and she catches herself on her hands and knees, heart still caught in the throes of panic, trying to escape from her chest.

The roc crashes to the ground, dead. She looks up. Perne stands on the roc’s back, battleaxe buried in the back of its neck.

 _You trust me,_ the halfling says, wonder in her voice.

\---

The parchments she acquires from the small bookshop are the last step in a long journey. She has pieced together this ritual from whispers and rumors and what scraps of writing remain about the arcane realm.

It is remarkably simple, in the end. She runs over the ritual in her mind for days, mouthing the words silently to herself, always careful to leave the final invocation incomplete. The hardest part is finding an initial offering, something to appease her future patron. In the end, she locates a desert lion pride and an elderly lion limping behind the rest. She stuns it, binds it, and pulls it under the sparse shade of a spindly tree.

She kneels beside it, readying her knife. The words rise easily to her lips after so much practice, but her heart pounds in her ears as she nears the end of the incantation. Hands shaking, she lifts the knife and speaks the final words.

She draws the knife across the lion’s throat, and a spray of dark blood spatters the sand.

For a moment, nothing. Then the light begins to dim. She looks up to see the crimson sun being swallowed by a darkness that creeps across the sky, emanating from a single point of utter blackness. The ground beneath her feet falls away, leaving her in the dark with bloody hands.

A hole in space looms before her, and she can see the trails of light as it sucks stars towards it, dwarfing them with its mass, swallowing the star-glow.

The rumors of arcane patrons speak of the stars in fearful terms, hardly daring to name them, shying away from describing them. Some stars are said to be controlled by creatures from dimensions beyond, a window for them into the mortal world. Some are strange and eldritch creatures themselves, horrors beyond speaking. In this moment, she knows it is true. She can _feel_ it, a consciousness with an unspeakable age, watching her as she would look at an insect crawling across her floor.

She swallows, then says, _Who are you?_

Its attention focuses in on her, and she can feel the weight of its consideration as a pressure building behind her eyes. The voice, when it speaks, is earth-deep, vibrating through her entire body. She flinches, but there is no escaping it. :: who are you to demand a name? ::

 _A supplicant. Someone who would enter a pact with you._ She holds out her hands, and the blood on them makes it seem as though there are veins of darkness criss-crossing her hands, seamless with the night around her. She has rehearsed these words, knows what she needs to say. _I wish to offer you this soul, and many others besides, in return for your blessing._

:: and why should i not take you instead? :: She would almost call that amusement, were this entity not—what it is. :: your offering is so small, and your soul so bright. ::

 _I will bring you more, and brighter._ She should have brought something greater, she knows this, but she cannot slay a larger beast alone—not with only a sword—and she could not bring herself to kill an innocent person. In battle, she has few qualms, but simply seizing someone off the street feels too much like murder.

A sharp pain in her head, and then she feels a presence in her mind, shuffling through her thoughts. Memories blur past—Tarya’s golden hair, the giant’s blood on her clothing, her mother’s lilting voice singing a lullaby—and she cries out, trying to pull free, but the star has her in its grasp.

For the first time since deciding to do this, she feels the sour prick of fear.

:: you are so young. :: The star draws back, and for a moment her mind is completely empty, every thought and memory faded into the void, as though sucked out by the star—and then she is back in herself, breath coming fast, the cold air stinging the back of her throat.

 _I’d imagine almost anyone is young to you,_ she says. It is a gamble, but the star—the being behind the star, the creature from the Far Realms, _whatever_ this is—does not immediately smite her for insolence.

Instead, it draws back slightly, as though appraising her. :: few mortals can bear the knowledge i would grant to them. are you foolish enough to think you can? ::

She lifts her chin, sets her jaw. _Yes._

The deep, rumbling noise in response to that is unsettling, but clearly laughter. :: very well. if you will bring souls to me, then i will grant you my power. ::

A shadow lifts from the hole in space, winding toward her. It fastens around her throat, and she instinctively reaches up to wrench it away—then forces her hands to lower. It has her life in its metaphorical grasp regardless of what she does, and it would be foolish to anger it now.

The tendril around her throat is freezing, colder than anything she has ever felt on Athas. Her vision blurs, then crystallizes—

(Shadow falling like a stream of sand in the wind, pooling on the ground. The dark made solid, given unearthly flesh, whipping out of the hole in space, reaching for the glowing lives below. The endless void swallowing everything, all stars and planets and souls, absorbing them into its impossibly dense center.)

Thick, shivering tendrils of darkness weave from the star, wrap around her, and the air in her lungs suddenly freezes solid. She fights to breathe, eyes widening with panic. The voice sounds in her head again, and she feels it in her veins, between her bones, permeating every part of her.

:: my name is acamar, and you are now bound to me. ::

A flash of _feeling_ , more intense than anything she has ever felt, too vast to be named, and she tries to scream through the ice in her chest.

Everything disappears and she is back in the desert again, a dead lion at her feet and dried blood on her hands. For a moment, she looks around, disoriented—the sky is still dark, and for a moment she thinks she is still _out there_ , but the stars shine here, white jewels in the night that fell while she conversed with Acamar.

She stumbles to her feet and stands for a moment, swaying slightly. Her head is light, her heart pounding as though she has just run a great distance, and her skin is cold, but slowly returning to normal in the heat that still radiates from the sun-warmed sand. She tastes blood where she bit her tongue at some point, but she hardly notices it—her entire body hums with a strange energy, her ears ringing with a frequency just beyond hearing that nonetheless makes the hair at the back of her neck prickle.

She looks up. The stars—once familiar and comforting—gaze back at her like a thousand eyes, their scrutiny heavy in the dark.

\---

She and Perne take a contract to rid a nearby cave of a cinder-eye basilisk. The farmer who offers their payment seems dubious at their assurances that the two of them will be enough to defeat it, but says nothing to stop them.

 _Do not look into its eyes,_ Perne tells her as they approach its lair. She nods.

The basilisk is a lumbering creature that towers over her and the halfling, with reddish-brown scales and long spines protruding from its back. She holds back, firing spells from behind the partial cover of an outcropping, while Perne wades in, swinging her battleaxe with both hands.

Things are going well until a particularly deep swipe by Perne produces a gout of blood from the beast. It sprays the halfling in the face, and she staggers back with a yell, clawing at her reddened and blistering skin.

The basilisk leaps at her, knocking her over, and begins to tear into her with its teeth. Perne screams, reaching up with both hands to try to keep its jaw away from her, but fire blasts from its eyes, enveloping the two of them in flame.

She fires a spell at the basilisk, trying to distract it from Perne, but as the flames clear, she can see the halfling lying unconscious on the ground, burned and bleeding.

The basilisk charges her. She does not have time to cast another spell. She raises her sword—Tarya’s sword—and swings it. It shatters against the basilisk’s hide, spraying shards of obsidian through the air.

She lifts her gaze in time to see the fire that erupts from the basilisk’s eyes. She throws her arms up, shielding her face, and bites back a scream of pain as the fire eats away at her armor, licking at the skin beneath. Through the flames. she can see that Perne’s chest still rises and falls, the movement near-indiscernible but present.

The basilisk rears up, clawed feet striking at her, gashing large wounds across her front. Blood pours down its sides, hissing and steaming when it hits the sand. Some of it spatters her bare hands, and she immediately feels the scalding pain, blisters rising under the intense heat.

There is only enough time to cast one more spell—one more attack from the basilisk, and she will fall. She has one chance.

She puts her hands out. Darkness swirls from them, surging towards Perne’s still form. Perne’s body shudders, and she can suddenly feel the well of energy in the halfling’s body, like a flame guttering in the wind—almost extinguished. The spell snaps forward, purple-edged tendrils writhing around the basilisk, which roars in pain.

The ground beneath the halfling begins to turn grey, sand falling to ash. Perne’s eyelids flutter, and she can feel her confusion and fear echoing through the dark. The strands of opaque shadow connect Perne to the spell, drawing life from her to inflict more damage on the beast.

With a long howl, the basilisk collapses forward. At the same moment, Perne’s body spasms, the connection winking out.

She stands alone in the sudden silence, blood from the basilisk and her own wounds mingling on her skin, the shadows slowly fading. Her breath comes fast and shallow, the places where the basilisk burned her sending bolts of pain through her when she moves. She feels drained in a way she has never felt before, every part of her aching. She knows without checking that the basilisk is dead. Perne is as well.

I had to, she thinks, but there is a bitter taste in the back of her mouth.

\---

She goes back to Balic once.

No one recognizes her, though her only disguise is the hood of her cloak. She navigates the market with some difficulty—the stalls shift and move over time like dunes traversing the desert. Tarya’s sword still hangs from the sheath on her belt, though there are nicks in the edge of the obsidian blade now. She is here as part of a caravan, having signed on as a guard to get some money. Balic is one stop on their circuit of city-states and trading posts.

Truthfully, she does not know why she is using her free time to subject herself to even more of this city. She left Balic behind years ago, and has not regretted it very much since. She has changed, and Balic has fundamentally stayed the same.

Still, here she is.

The streets become familiar, and soon she finds herself in front of her old home, everything the same as she remembers—the clay walls, the low doorway, all of it. She stands on the other side of the road, wondering if she should cross and knock.

The door opens and she slips back into the shadow of a building, breathing shallowly and holding as still as possible. Her mother emerges, followed by a tall man. He has a neatly trimmed beard just beginning to grey near his temples, and the cut and quality of his clothes tells her that he has money, is perhaps a merchant. Her mother, too, wears nicer clothes than she recalls her wearing before.

She watches her mother slip a hand into the crook of the man’s elbow. He leans down, says something into her ear, and her mother laughs. There is a lightness to her step and a glow to her mother’s face that makes something in her chest ache. For a split second, she is caught between warring instincts—to run away, or toward her mother with open arms.

Then her mother turns, and she can see the swell of her midsection under her dress, her body unmistakably pregnant.

She’s been replaced, is her first reaction, that of a hurt and betrayed child. Her second thought is more reasonable—it has been years since she disappeared from Balic without a trace, her mother probably thinks she is _dead_ , of course she would move on.

And besides, if her mother saw her now—

There are no outward signs of her pact, her arcane abilities, but she is sure that her mother would still _know_ , somehow. She shivers, suddenly cold. Magic still sets her on edge, even after years of using it, so she can only imagine how her mother would react to it. No. Best to let the past stay at a distance. It had been foolish to return here. She will not repeat this mistake again.

She leans against the wall and watches her mother and her mother’s new lover disappear into the crowd.

\---

The first time she casts a spell, the darkness that blasts forth from the palms of her hands startles her. Shadows writhe around the wooden figure she had set up for target practice, and she sees the outline of claws, savaging the dummy. Her fingers curl inwards, almost of their own volition, and the claws follow her movement, clenching tight.

The figure explodes into a pile of splinters and dust.

When it is over, when the shadows have dissipated, she wavers for a moment on unsteady feet, breath coming fast and heart pounding. There is a taste of blood in her mouth. Power crackles between her fingers, wisps of dark mist that fade as she lowers her hands. For a moment, just a moment, she imagines her mother’s face, twisted with horror at her betrayal.

She doubles over and throws up.

\---

She slips out of her nightly trance to find that the fire has all but died, reduced to a handful of embers flickering in the low wind. Her companions lie in a circle around the fire, sleeping. Dray is a great mound to her right, snoring with a guttural noise like a rumble of distant thunder. Ugie is on watch, a silhouette against the sky that is just beginning to lighten with dawn.

Stretching, she rises to her feet, kicking free of her sleeping roll. The desert night is cool; a light wind brushes her bare arms. She finds a bush to relieve herself behind, then stands away from the group, hands at her side. Closes her eyes, takes a breath, opens them again—then looks up.

The stars have not yet begun to fade, though the eastern horizon is a growing blue glow. She feels her head growing light, vision dazzled by the endless expanse of starlit black.

“Acamar,” she breathes, and the stars flicker like a thousand eyes opening. Darkness falls in a veil around her, and she has to remind herself to breathe as the air takes on a chill. A hole in space, blacker than black, looms before her, and she feels the heaviness of her patron’s presence like a sudden blow to the chest.

:: why have you called? ::

She had planned to preface her request with niceties, but in this moment, she recognizes how useless mortal flattery is to the corpse star. She swallows, and can distantly feel the sand of Athas under her feet, the morning breeze. Both are muted by impossible distance and the thick darkness.

I need more, she thinks. Teach me more.

A spark of pain, located somewhere in her spine, and she bites her lip. :: you do not make demands here. ::

She spreads her hands, fighting against the urge to look away from the stars. Not a demand, she thinks. Only a request. She holds an image in her head of consuming shadows pouring from her hands, of the lives she has taken in the name of her patron. It is an offering, and she can feel the star shift towards her, accepting it.

:: you wish to learn more? very well. but do not come crawling back to us if your mind shatters under the strain. ::

She nods, heart caught somewhere in the back of her throat. The darkness extends a tendril that wraps around her wrist. A cold pulse through her veins, and she sees—

(Shadow consuming all the land, dissolving sand and rock and flesh. Myriad eyes opening in the shifting dark, all of them looking at her, all of them glowing with the same nausea-inducing starlight.)

She shudders, opens her mouth to scream, and forces it closed. Her body is still on Athas, this is only an illusion, she cannot cause her companions alarm by crying out.

(The stars are hungry.)

A surge of knowledge, a sparking at her fingertips, and she sees in a flash how to weave a new spell, more powerful, more deadly. She is going numb from the cold, pain crackling over her skin like lightning.

The dark releases her and she stumbles back into the desert night, gasping. She bends over, hands on her knees, struggling to catch her breath, cheeks burning with the cold. The heat radiating from the sand creeps back in, making her reddened skin tingle.

\---

They are crossing a sandy basin when she becomes aware of another presence beside her. She turns to look and nearly stumbles. Tarya floats a few feet away, grey eyes regarding her. She is dressed in the armor she wore the night she died, but her body is whole, her skin unbloodied.  

 _El’tera,_ Tarya says, and she blinks hard, trying to dispel the image of her friend. When she opens them, Tarya still hovers a foot off the desert sand, empty hands stretched towards her as though she is supplicating her for something. _Don’t you have any words for your oldest friend?_ the dead girl says, but her voice is edged with teasing laughter.

She fixes her eyes on Bor’s back, counting the rivets in his armor. Perhaps if she ignores this, it will dissipate.

(Or perhaps she is finally going mad.)

 _You still have my necklace,_ Tarya notes. She floats along, keeping pace. _But you have changed._

Of course I have, she thinks but does not say. Ahead of her, Dray laughs at something Bor tells him. No one else notices the dead girl in their midst.

 _Was it worth it, seeking such power?_ Tarya asks.

Yes, she mouths, then realizes she is giving into it by speaking to her hallucinations. Tarya laughs, tossing her golden hair, and in the sunlight she almost looks solid and alive again.

_You chose this because of me. Do the stars love you as I did?_

You did not love me.

Tarya does not deny it, and somehow that stings the most, though she knows this is all in her mind. _Well, then do you love the stars as you loved me?_

She clamps her mouth shut, gritting her teeth, and strides onwards, feet slipping in the fine sand. Tarya’s laughter follows her, mocking.

\---

The stars show her the future in gasps, twisted strands of fate revealing themselves in disjointed images, a thousand possible deaths. She watches her companions fall over and over in her head, bloodied or burning or consumed by darkness reaching from her own hands. She watches—feels—her own death, multiplied.

She does not know how much of it is true possibility and how much of it is merely the fear her own mind supplies.

She does not know if that difference even matters anymore.

\---

Tarya appears to her again, this time sitting on her sleeping pad, legs sprawled out comfortably across the ground. _Hello,_ she says brightly, offering her a smile.

Go away, she thinks, hard. Tarya’s smile widens.

_After all the effort it took to appear to you? I’m not going anywhere._

You’re an illusion. She sits down on the sleeping pad, inches from where Tarya is, but she does not dare reach out to touch her. You’re a hallucination, the stars are making me see you—

 _Oh, you and your stars,_ Tarya scoffs. _Do you even know what happens to the souls of the people you kill for them?_

She shakes her head slightly.

_Well, I won’t ruin the fun for you by telling you. I’d avoid getting killed by a warlock, though, if you can help it._

She lets out a breath, refusing to look at Tarya. Can you get off my sleeping pad? she thinks at the dead girl.

_If you’re so convinced I’m an illusion, then why not touch me? Surely your hand would just pass right through me._

She stands abruptly, muttering something about taking a walk when the others look at her, and strides away. Tarya follows her with a laugh.

 _Always so easily flustered, El’tera._ She sounds amused. _Some things never change._

“You’re dead,” she mutters once she is out of earshot of the camp. Tarya shrugs.

_I am. What about it?_

“So why are you here?”

 _Maybe you’re right. Maybe I_ am _just a hallucination brought on by dealing with entities beyond your power._ There’s a gleam in Tarya’s eyes that sets her on edge. _Maybe you should stop killing, let your magic go._

“You know I can’t do that,” she snaps. “I made a pact. There’s no backing out of it.”

 _You’ve never tried. Not really, anyway._ Tarya drifts ahead of her, grey eyes serious. For a moment, she swears she sees pinpricks of white in what should be the flat black of Tarya’s pupils. _Why not try?_

“They’d kill me.”

Tarya huffs out a laugh, crossing her arms. _Because you, the brave adventurer, so_ clearly _fear death. Which is why all you ever do is run towards it. Try again._

She stops, frowning. “What do you mean?”

 _Come now, dearest._ Tarya reaches out, finger hovering millimeters from her lips, and she can feel—not warmth, exactly, but something. _You need to face your truth, same as anyone else. You don’t want to give up your powers. Why?_

She cuts her eyes away, down to the sand at her feet, kicking at the loose dust. “I like having magic,” she says at last, the words dragging like thorns in her throat. “I _like_ having this power. Without it, I’m—”

 _You’re nothing special._ Tarya tilts her head to one side. _You’re right. Without this, you’d have lived your whole life in obscurity, serving my father in Balic. And you don’t want to return to that._

She shakes her head.

_And is it worth it? You are under no illusions about what happens to those you kill, yes?_

“It doesn’t matter,” she protests. “The dead are dead, and it does not matter how they died.” It sounds weak even to her own ears, but what does it _matter_ that the stars consume the souls of those she sends to them? She is not the one being swallowed by the dark.

Tarya raises an eyebrow. _So that’s what you believe._

She runs a hand through her tangled hair, dull silver catching against her fingers. Exhaustion has been creeping up on her all day; now it strikes with full force. She wants nothing more than to be done with this conversation. “I care about myself, and those few I choose to become close with. That’s all I can afford in this world. That’s all _anyone_ can afford. I can’t help everyone. I can’t do tangible _good_ in a place like this.”

 _But you can do tangible harm._ Tarya’s outline flickers, and she glances up at the dark sky. _Ah, time for me to go. Sorry to cut this short—I’ll visit again, though._

She nods. Tarya vanishes with a soft noise, like the sigh of wind through sand, and she is left alone under the stars.

\---

A memory, ragged at the edges like old parchment:

 _You are precious to me._ Her mother at the fire, stirring something in a pot. She herself is small, barely up to her mother’s waist, with one hand is knotted in her mother’s dress to keep her close.

 _Mama?_ The heat of the fire, so close, makes the skin of her face feel tight.

 _El’tera, darling. If I could give you a better life, I would._ Her mother lifts the ladle to her mouth to taste, then offers it to her. She sticks her tongue out, hesitant, and the rich taste of meat fills her mouth. _If I could give you everything you deserve, I would._

She smiles up at her mother. _Someday I’ll be very rich,_ she asserts. _And I’ll give_ you _whatever you want._

 _Always such a dreamer._ Her mother sighs and crouches down, hands spread. She throws her arms around her mother’s neck and is lifted off the ground, laughing.

\---

A thought, now: Athas is not a kind world to dreamers.

\---

They find another tomb and venture in, Bor leading the way. All goes well until they stumble into a nest of giant scorpions, a skittering mass of stingers and claws.

She fires spells off left and right. The others let loose with their arrows and knives and swords, but by the time they have cleared the area of most of the scorpions, Bor and Ugie are unconscious on the floor of the tomb.

The last one—the biggest—spits poison at Dray as he hacks at it with his sword. She has cloaked herself in invisibility, and uses her concealment to dart across the room to find new angles to shoot spells from.

“It’s—just—not— _dying_ ,” Dray grunts out between swings of his greatsword. As he readies another strike, the scorpion’s limbs flash out and close around him, yanking him close. Its stinger descends, stabbing into Dray’s scaled skin, and he lets out a roar.

She reaches for her most powerful spell, a web of darkness spraying from her hands. The scorpion skitters to the left, and the spell goes wide. There is a moment where she instinctively reaches for the power to recast immediately, siphoning energy off from her surroundings—

(The spasms of Perne’s dying body as she draws her life force from her, the sand under her turning to sterile ash. The halfling’s eyes flickering open for just a moment before the light drains from them.)

Bor and Ugie twitch on the floor, tendrils of darkness snaking from her hands towards them. The stars are hungry, she thinks nonsensically, hands shaking. The stars are hungry and giving them two powerful souls would satiate them for a long while—

“No,” she says out loud. The scorpion turns towards her. She drops her invisibility, spreads her arms wide. Dray’s eyes widen, and he redoubles his efforts to free himself from the chitinous arms that trap him.

The scorpion pauses its assault on the dragonborn to whip its tail at her. She does not have time to dodge. It impacts her shoulder, and though her armor absorbs some of the impact, it knocks her sideways and she nearly loses her footing. But as it rears back, she brings her hands together. A pool of darkness spreads beneath it, viscous shadow clinging to the scorpion’s legs.

It screeches, but the shadow reaches up, swallowing it inch by inch. The stinger flails at her, crashes into the sand beside her. Her hands flash through another series of movements, and claws of shadow spring from the air, enveloping the beast.

Dray wrenches free from its grasp with a roar, lightning flickering from his mouth, and his greatsword flashes through the air, burying itself in the gap between the scorpion’s neck plates. A terrible, high-pitched noise fills the air as it thrashes.

When its movements stop and the well of shadow beneath its body fades, she falls to her knees, panting. Dray slips fully free from the scorpion’s arms and stumbles to his feet.

“Thanks,” he gasps out. Blood pours from the wounds where the scorpion’s stinger punctured his scales.

I almost killed your friends, she thinks. The urge to throw up surges; she swallows past it. “We should tend to the others,” she rasps out.

\---

In the days after making her pact, she wanders around paranoid that somehow it _shows_. That the star-glow that hums at the edges of her vision is visible to everyone else, too, a sickly, pale haze that suffuses her entire body.

No one notices, of course. Outwardly, she is the same as she has always been. No one has any reason to suspect that she has _changed_ , least of all when she spends most of her time in transit, making sure no one knows her long enough to notice any change in the first place.

One morning, she looks in the mirror and sees pits of bottomless black where her eyes should be. For a moment, she stares at them, blinking in confusion—then blinking in earnest, trying to clear her vision, hoping it is a trick of the light. Her eyes remain dark.

She leans forward until her nose brushes the glass of the mirror, breath fogging the smooth surface as her heart picks up speed. Twin voids stare back at her. Dread gathers heavy in her stomach.

 _Acamar,_ she says desperately, and the world snuffs out like a candle flame, leaving her in a sudden dark. She gets the feeling her patron was waiting for her to call on it.

:: yes? ::

_What did you do to me?_

A chuckle, low and unsettling. :: exactly what you asked me to. ::

 _It’s not supposed to_ show, _is it? I can’t walk around looking like this,_ she pleads.

:: if it is consuming your body, then it is out of your control, and you must rein it in. ::

_How?_

:: learn to control this power on your own. i will not coddle you through this. you learn, or you die. ::

She opens her mouth to reply, but the world snaps back into place, daylight flooding through the window. She stumbles, grabbing at the dresser to keep her balance.

One thing is certain. She cannot go outside looking like this. Any user of magic is distrusted in this world, their powers inevitably defiling the landscape, though the rulers of the city-states are the sorcerer kings, powerful defilers themselves. A lone elf, though, with nothing but one or two spells to defend herself against a vengeful mob? She does not stand a chance. Come nightfall, she can sneak out, perhaps.

She sits down on the bed and closes her eyes. Power pulses inside her like a second heartbeat, lighting up the backs of her eyelids with a cold purple glow. She envisions it, the shadows in her blood, and tries to imagine it all coalescing, condensing in her center. Pressure builds, like her blood is trying to escape her veins, but she furrows her brow, concentrates, pushes harder—

A sudden sharp pain right underneath her collarbone. She chokes, eyes flying open, hands clutching at her chest. Warmth surges in her throat and she doubles over, coughing blood onto the wooden floor. She stares at the red spattered on the wooden boards, vision swimming with dark spots.

That can’t be good, she thinks distantly, before falling face-forward onto the ground, everything going dark.

\---

Her first—and only—kiss with Tarya is a mistake.

They steal a bottle of wine from Tarya’s father and sit in Tarya’s garden. The plants here are mostly those native to the surrounding desert, but scattered amid the sagebrush and the succulents are the bright petals of exotic flowers, blooms that she knows together consume more water in a day the average citizen of Balic.

In the cool of the evening, Tarya seems to gleam amid the flowers, golden hair washed pale by the faint light of the moons overhead. They pass the bottle back and forth, steadily emptying it, and she tries not to focus too much on how she can feel the way the glass rim holds the heat of Tarya’s mouth.

The world grows pleasantly hazy, a warmth expanding in her chest, and her hands grow restless, wanting to reach for Tarya, to touch her, to hold her hand, _anything._ To keep her hands occupied, she plays with the plant beside her, a spindly succulent with red branches.

 _What’s your favorite flower here?_ she asks, trying to distract herself.

Tarya considers this, then points at a flower like a golden cup, bright as her hair or the sun. _Which do you like?_

She looks around. In the moonlight, all the colors are muted, but there is a cluster of pale blue blossoms that seems to shine brighter than the rest. She indicates those. _What are they called?_

 _I don’t recall._ Tarya shrugs dismissively, then pushes to her feet. She sways for a moment before making her way over to the cluster of blue flowers. She bends down, plucks one, and returns.

 _What are you doing?_ she asks Tarya, and Tarya shakes her head, gesturing for her to be quiet. She holds perfectly still as Tarya reaches up to tuck the flower behind her ear, save for a shiver she cannot suppress when Tarya’s fingers brush her bare skin.

Tarya turns to her, moon in her face, and everything is suddenly sharp-edged with her yearning. It is too much. She cannot help it—she leans forward, aiming for those lips outlined in moonlight, and their mouths collide. Tarya is warm, and she tastes like the wine they have been drinking, fruity and faintly spiced.

Tarya stiffens in surprise for a second—then kisses her back.

The thin red stalk she had been toying with snaps off in her hand, a drop of moisture spreading across her fingers. Tarya’s hand creeps up her arm to cradle her neck, pulling her in deeper. Her tongue flickers out, and Tarya’s lips part ever so slightly.

Then Tarya pulls away, and she is left with the lingering warmth of Tarya’s mouth on hers. Tarya sits back, reaches for the bottle, and takes a swig as though washing her out of her mouth.

 _That won’t happen again,_ Tarya says.

She nods, tries to smile. _My apologies. I meant nothing by it._ I meant everything by it, she thinks, and swallows back the pain rising in her chest.  

They do not speak of it again.

\---

She wakes, and takes a moment to reorient herself. She is on the floor, that much is clear, and the light streaming through the window above her is the weak, pale light of dawn. When she turns her head, she feels her cheek stick to the wood—the blood under her has dried to a tacky, thick consistency.

The pain in her chest has subsided to a dull, throbbing ache that pulses in time with her heart. After a moment longer, she tries to sit up, and manages to push herself upright with shaking arms. Her head pounds too, like someone has driven a spear through her right temple. What _happened_? Last she remembered, she had been trying to force down her powers—

A timid sound of knocking from the other side of the door interrupts her thoughts.

 _Come in,_ she calls, and the knob rattles—locked. She stumbles to her feet and manages to make it to the door, supporting herself against the wall the whole way. Her numb fingers slip on the lock mechanism, but after a couple tries she turns the deadbolt inwards with a click.

The door opens a crack, and the round, dark face of the innkeeper appears. _You’re alive,_ he says with obvious relief. _I was worried I would have to call someone in to carry your body away. Why haven’t you come downstairs?_

 _I’ve been—_ She clears her throat. _I’ve been sleeping._

 _For four days?_ He looks at her in disbelief and faint alarm. She blinks, casting about for something to say. Her mind is not being very cooperative.

 _I was... very tired._ He does not look convinced, but it is the best she can do. Four days—that explains why she feels so weak. _Can you get me some water and food?_

He nods cautiously. _That’ll be an extra charge. Plus, you owe a day’s rent._

She gestures for him to stay where he is—hopefully he will not see the bloodstains on the floor—and makes her slow, careful way over to the drawer where she has stashed some money. She can feel him watching her, but she manages not to stumble even though her legs shake with exhaustion. She counts out the amount he tells her, then returns to hand it to him.

He leaves, then comes back with a flask of water and some strips of an unidentifiable meat on brown bread. She accepts the meal, such as it is, and locks the door behind him. It is safest to take it slow, to sip the water and take small bites, but the moment the water touches her tongue she is gulping it down. The coolness floods her chest, and by the time she lowers it her stomach sloshes with the weight of the water in it. Already, she feels better.

She gnaws on a corner of the bread and glances in the mirror. With a flash of relief, she realizes her eyes have gone back to their usual color. She probably could have figured that out from the lack of horrified reactions from the innkeeper, but her mind is still processing things slowly.

Lowering herself onto her bed, she considers this. Trying to force down her powers evidently _worked,_ at least superficially. It also incapacitated her for four days.

Learn or die, Acamar had said, and she had very nearly died.

The power still roils within her, an unsettling feeling of movement in her deepest parts. She can feel the way it surges against the boundaries holding it in, threatening to spill over. For now, it is contained.

For now.

\---

Acamar visits her in the night, shows her how to twist her fingers and tongue in ways that will call shadows to do her bidding. She takes long walks, away from Bor and Dray, and if they suspect that her outings are more than they seem, they do not comment on it.

One night, she sits on a wide, flat rock that is still warm from the day’s sun, looks up, and waits. A breath, two, and the darkness reaches down to swallow her. The cold is expected, almost familiar at this point, but it still knocks the air out of her every time.

“I have a question,” she says, once she is before the corpse star.

:: yes? ::

“What was Athas like when it wasn’t—when it wasn’t how it is now?”

For a moment, the star does not answer, and she worries that it is a foolish question. :: it was much the same, in the grand scheme of things :: it says at last. :: a bit more green, a bit wetter, but overall? the same world. ::

She nods, then, emboldened by its answer, adds, “Can you show me?”

The presence in her head again, flipping through her thoughts like they are pages in a book. The darkness fades, and she sees—

(Hills of rolling green, grass that sways in waves under the gentle touch of a moist breeze. Water, falling from the heavens, silvering the leaves of the trees that tower proudly overhead. The land glows with rainfall, soft mist entirely unlike anything she has ever seen in the desert. The sky seems so small, bounded by branches and green.

It is only an illusion, but the rawness of sand under the sun feels like a distant memory. Athas now holds only days and nights under an unending sameness—red and black and grey. In Athas before, colors swarm like insects across her vision, colors she hardly even knew existed.

Who would want to destroy a place like this?)

She opens her mouth, another question rising, but Acamar answers it before she can say anything.

(The lightning-flicker of arcane energy, draining the color from the earth until the grass is yellow and brittle and the rich soil turns to dry sand. Blue skies eaten away by fire and smoke, cloaking the sun in crimson. Twisted and broken bodies in the wake of sorcerers. The sharp aftertaste of arcane workings hanging like a sullen mist in the air, in the back of her throat.)

She reels back, horrified, but this part is familiar. This is what she is good for, and not much more. For the first time, she wonders—how much of that is the world she comes from? The desert births harsh things, toughened things, things able to survive its unending wrath. It does not produce gentleness.

For a moment, she is at the edge of a precipice, staring down at a possible future below. In this Athas, in the light and the rain, she could have set aside her pact, let the power drain from her veins, let the shadows slink back to the stars they came from. There would have been no need to fight for survival.

A pulse of cold through her, and the vision shatters. :: that world is dead. ::

The stars have let out tendrils that sink into her flesh, tug her back like a dog on a leash. She bows her head, lets out a long breath. “Yes,” she says, and does not dare think of anything beyond that.

\---

They get entangled in a slave rebellion in the city-state of Raam that ends with blood on their hands and the leader of the slaves dead by their swords. Their pockets are heavy with gold, though—or rather, the chests of gold from the law enforcers that their new slaves carry are heavy—and they leave the city with varying degrees of guilt.

“Do you think we did the right thing?” Dray asks her, later. She shrugs.

“We did what we did. Now we live with that.”

She pays her slaves a silver piece a month, more money than they seem to have had in their possession, ever. The gratitude on their faces does not make her feel better.

You could be free, she thinks sometimes, looking at them. We could have freed you.

Most of her knows that the rebellion was futile, that slavery is a fact of life on Athas that will not be uprooted within her lifetime, if ever. Even if they had sided with the rebellion, they would have ultimately been defeated.

There is still that small part of her that echoes her conversation with Tarya— _tangible good, tangible harm_ —no matter how much she tries to push it down.

She does her best to ignore it.

\---

They spend a few days in a small trading outpost, taking up lodgings in the town’s only inn. She purchases armor and clothing—it is nice to have something somewhat clean and not stained with blood, for once in a very long time.

She is in her room, folding clothes stiff with newness, when a familiar voice echoes in her head.

_Are you happy?_

She spins, a spell rising to her lips, but it is only Tarya, sitting cross-legged on her bed, hands folded in her lap. “What do you want?” she asks instead, tossing the shirt in her hands aside to cross her arms.

 _So impolite._ Tarya unfolds her legs, stands up. The dead girl is a few inches taller, and so she has to crane her neck up to meet Tarya’s eyes. _Didn’t you miss me?_

“Not particularly.”

Tarya’s lips twitch, a ghost of a smile flickering across her face. _Liar._

She narrows her eyes. “Why do you keep appearing to me?”

_So you’ve dropped the pretense that this is all a hallucination?_

“I still think you’re an illusion. But something is sending you.”

_Or else you’re simply going insane._

She shrugs. “An occupational hazard.” Her words are careless, but she knows Tarya can feel the undercurrent of trepidation. Warlocks - star-pact warlocks especially—can be driven insane by their connection to their patrons. She knows the signs to watch out for, but still.

“You were wrong, you know,” she adds. Tarya arches an eyebrow.

_Oh? About what?_

“What you said last time. I never cared about _dying in obscurity_. Not enough to do what I’ve done, at least.”

_Then why make a pact with something from the Far Realms?_

She sighs, pauses, as though she has not turned these words over in her mind so many times that they are as smooth as sand-worn stone. “When you died—after you died. The worst part was how powerless I felt. Like nothing I did made any difference. And it _didn’t_ , not when all I had was my own strength. With—” She almost says its name, and her tongue stumbles— “with my patron, I have the power that could have saved you.”

 _And what do you use it for? You’re not back in Balic, defending others like me from the giants._ Tarya leans forward. _No, you use it to put down slave rebellions and line your pockets with gold. How noble of you._

“I never claimed to be noble.”

 _Do you truly think you deserve a better world?_ Tarya’s eyes gleam with disdain. _When you leave a wreckage of murder and lies everywhere you go? Athas is the only world you could ever thrive in. What you call neutrality here would be called evil on another world._

“I call it _survival_ ,” she shoots back. “And don’t suddenly pretend you care about me.”

 _Why, El’tera. I’m hurt._ Tarya draws back, a mockingly offended expression on her face.

“I’d care more,” she says, voice going cold, “if you were anything more than a figment of my imagination.”

 _Do you remember that time we kissed?_ Tarya tilts her head to one side, changing the subject abruptly. It throws her off balance, and she opens her mouth, then closes it. Tarya continues: _I do. I’d never considered you as more than a friend until then._

“And after that?” her traitorous mouth says before she can stop it.

_I will admit that certain thoughts crossed my mind more than once._

She reaches out before she can think better of it, and her hand closes around empty air, fingers passing through Tarya’s arm. She looks up to see a small, sad smile on the dead girl’s face.

 _I was not uninterested._ Tarya’s eyes, that clear grey—she feels a twisting in her chest, a vague ache and yearning. _Do you truly think that I would have come back if I did not care?_

“But you’re not even _here_ —”

_Believe what you will. I cared deeply for you. Were I not the daughter of a patrician, and you a field worker, perhaps we could have—perhaps. But that is all the past._

Balic is years and miles behind her, but for a moment—just a moment—she wishes she was back in its dusty streets, chasing Tarya in the sunlight.

She shakes herself. Even if— _even if_ Tarya is more than a hallucination, a trick of her desperate and lonely heart, there is no reason to believe that she is truly Tarya, rather than some spirit or her patron trying to deceive her.

Still, the words slip out. “I wish you were truly here.”

Tarya nods. _And what would you say to me if I were really here?_

Instead of answering, she leans forward and kisses the air where Tarya’s lips are. Closes her eyes, and feels a faint warmth, like an exhale over her skin.

When she opens her eyes, Tarya is gone.

\---

 _Catch me._ Tarya’s hair in the sunlight, the flash of the pale skin of her feet as she runs. _Catch me, El’tera._

Her feet—bare as well—are sure on the dusty stone of the street. The laughter of the other children whips by them as they pass, but her eyes cannot seem to catch on anything but the golden glow of Tarya. She lunges and manages to snag Tarya’s arm, spinning the girl around as they skid to a halt. They stand face-to-face, panting. Tarya grins.

_Best two out of three?_

\---

She stays with a nomad group of elves for a time, and does not lie to them about her arcane abilities—merely does not _mention_ them. For a time, she even manages to fool herself into thinking that if she did reveal herself, they would not mind—that somehow, the ages-old elven aversion to magic would not touch her here.

This lasts for about a month.

The tribe herds horses; she is out in the fields watching them alongside a few of the tribespeople when the gith attack. The only warning they have is a faint blur of movement, and then a blast of pain through her head that whites out her vision.

When her sight returns, she is on her back. There are the sounds of fighting, somewhere above her spinning head. She forces herself upright, grabbing for the bone knife in her belt.

A figure looms over her, elven in form but hunched over and gaunt, with reptilian features and three clawed fingers. It has a club in one hand that it swings at her. She is still dizzy from the psychic blast and cannot dodge; it thuds into her shoulder and sends her flying. She hits the ground, breath driven from her, and the gith leans over her, raising its club.

She does not even think before bringing her hand up. A blast of darkness from her palm impacts the gith in the chest and it stumbles back, eyes going wide, a gurgle of fear emerging from its chest. It swings at her again, but she ducks and shouts wordlessly, pushing her will forward. Shadows erupt from the ground and swallow the gith.

For a moment, she lets her head fall back to the ground, taking deep breaths, adrenaline making her body vibrate, and then she stands. The fighting has died down; it was a small band of raiding gith, and the herders are used to attacks.

 _You_ — The elf nearest to her stares at her, mouth working, distress on her face. She should run, she knows. Leave and never come back.

 _I didn’t mean_ — she starts, but the elf grabs her arm, wrenching her knife from her hands. She could blast him aside, but the others are beginning to gather around, swords in their hands and mingled fear and anger in their eyes, and she cannot fight off ten by herself.

They march her back to the cluster of tents, one elf holding each of her arms. The tribe leader confers with the herders, and then comes closer. The elves holding her step aside.

She sees the blow coming and makes no move to avoid it. The tribe leader’s fist strikes her face and she falls, pain blossoming alongside the warm gush of blood from her nose.

The tribe leader stands over her, a snarl on her lips and disgust in her eyes. _Get off my land,_ she says, _and never return._

\---

She sits with Dray at the end of the day, sharing a quiet meal. He tends to his wounds, wrapping bandages around them clumsily but thoroughly. His greatsword lies at his side, the blood polished off its blade.

He looks up and catches her watching him. “We did good today, huh?” he offers.

She nods. “You certainly did.”

“Do you think of us as—as heroes, maybe? I mean, we save people _all_ the time, even if we—you know.” Put down slave rebellions and murder innocents to power spells, is what remains unspoken.

She considers this. “ _Hero_ is not a word I use lightly,” she says at last, “but you are more of a hero that any I have met in this land. I wish I had a heart like yours.”

He smiles brightly. “You’re _plenty_ heroic.”

Not the way you are, she thinks, not the way I would be if I were born on another world. Instead, she nods.

The desert does not make heroes. The desert consumes them, along with cities and roads and stars, everything eaten away by sand, swallowed in the heat. Everything that exists in this world is temporary—here today and washed away by the wind tomorrow. One can fight entropy, or follow in the tracks it leaves, taking what remains.

She made her choice long ago.

\---

She feels the whisper of Tarya’s appearance as a prickle all along her spine, a sudden presence in a previously empty space.

“You’re back,” she says, and Tarya laughs from behind her.

_Did you doubt me?_

“I’ve decided something.” She turns to face Tarya, who tilts her head to one side and waits for her to continue. “It doesn’t really matter if you’re truly here or not.”

 _Why not?_ Tarya asks.

She sighs. “Are you going to make me say it?”

Tarya merely smiles.

“I loved you,” she says, “and I don’t think I ever moved on.”

 _I didn’t want you to._ Tarya grins. _And I knew you wouldn’t. Your biggest flaw is that you hold onto things too tightly. I don’t think you’ve ever moved on from anything in your life._

Despite herself, she smiles at that. “And did you come back just to list my flaws?”

 _Oh, I could go on, don’t doubt that._ Tarya comes closer and reaches out. She takes her hand. Tarya is warm and—not quite solid, but not entirely incorporeal, either, as if she is seeping more and more into the real world.

“I’m going mad, aren’t I?” she says aloud.

Tarya shrugs. _Perhaps. Or perhaps it is this world that has gone mad. But to answer your question—no. I came back because your heart called me._

“But you chose to answer,” she says, and there is a foolish hope burning and caught in her throat.

_I did._

“And what does that mean?”

Tarya’s words take on a teasing time. _Are you going to make me say it?_

She waits.

Tarya leans forward until their noses are nearly touching. _I did love you,_ Tarya says, _and I do._

The hopeful heat is nearly too bright to bear. “What’re you going to do about it?”

Tarya kisses her. Her mouth tingles as she feels the faint pressure of something not quite there. She feels like she has swallowed the sun, every part of her warm.

“Caught you,” she whispers against Tarya’s lips, and feels her smile.

**Author's Note:**

> If I messed something up let me know - otherwise, thanks to B for answering all ten thousand questions I had while writing this. To everyone who got this far, thank you for reading and feel free to let me know what you thought!


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